A Mouse in the House

When we went to bed last night the husband asked me if Riley had come back in. I didn’t know that he had gone out. I was surprised because it was raining. I might have whined a bit about “my poor RiRi.” The husband got up to see where he was. Riley came running back in the house as soon as the door opened.

That should have been it. About 5 minutes later the husband and I realized we were alone in bed. That’s odd. We should have had 2 dogs and at least one cat. Then the commotion started in the dining room. The husband got up. He came back to inform me that my “poor RiRi” had brought something in the house.

Freckles was under the dining room table hopping up and down. Powder was sitting near her. Riley was on the table pretending that he had nothing to do with anything. I’m not sure where Under the Bed Dog was but I’m sure she was hiding.

Closer inspection revealed that Freckles had a mouse. She wanted the mouse to stay between her front legs. It is possible that she was trying to shield it from a very interested Powder. She knows what cats do to mice and has tried to take them away from the cats before. This mouse wasn’t cooperating. It kept running away. So Freckles would jump up, catch it in her mouth, lie down, and spit it out between her front legs again over and over. Freckles has a tendency to rescue rodents to death.

(I was impressed by her ability to catch it, usually in midair. If you threw a treat to her it would bounce off her head.)

I grabbed a dish towel and told Freckles that she needed to give the mouse to me. She didn’t want to. It got away and was retrieved a few more times before I got the towel over it. I wrapped it up and released it outside. It is probably now trying to explain how it was abducted to the other mice and signing up for a lifetime of therapy.

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One morning I woke up and took Romanov and Snowdoll outside as I usually do. When we came back inside, I went to make my coffee and, eventually, I realized something was wrong. Romanov, who normally would walk back to the bedroom to lie down was not even following me into the kitchen. And that is when I heard Snowdoll sort of bouncing around in the great room. I went back into the room and wondered what was going on. Both dogs were sniffing around and it took a while before either of them were close enough to startle the poor bird that somehow had found its way into our home. I immediately fought the dogs into the bedroom, waking up my husband in the process, and then opened doors and such to help the bird find its way back outside. It took a while but eventually it flew out the front door.

Later, when my husband actually got up and out of bed I told him about the bird. He said, “Oh, that’s what flew into the house last night.”

Apparently, he thought something had flown into the house but, when he didn’t see anything, he figured it was just his imagination.

The bird is lucky to be alive, all things considered, but my husband is far luckier.